The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3)(22)

Muttering another curse, he strode through the house with his boots on straight to where he’d taken out a can of soup earlier then decided he didn’t have time to heat it. He’d eat it cold while they talked, he decided, digging up the can opener from the drawer.

“Well?” he prompted.

She stayed on the mat by the door, arms still hugged tight across her middle, a hurt look on her face.

Remember when I said I was lousy at relationships, Meg?

“Look,” he tried. “It’s been a shitty day and I’m an ass when I’m hungry. If you want to do lunch in Great Falls we can, just not for a few days. I have to get that roof on.” He grabbed a spoon and dug into the can. It had a layer of yellow fat on the top that he tried not to think about. He scooped a gummy bite into his mouth.

“No,” she said with a catch of a humorless laugh in her voice. “I’m not here about…that. Not exactly. I mean—” She lifted a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m pregnant.”

The bite of cold chicken and rice congealed in his mouth.

And she was telling him because…?

He swallowed the lump and it stuck in his throat. “I wore condoms.”

“Not the whole time.” She flicked a blushing, you-know-what-I-mean look at him.

Okay, they’d messed around a little that last time, maybe enjoyed a few strokes bareback. He’d never done anything like that and it had been an impulse as they got carried away, both still half asleep. But it had only been a few before he’d grabbed a brain and covered up. Hell, he’d have been completely empty of sperm by then and you didn’t get a woman pregnant like that anyway. That was urban legend stuff.

Wasn’t it?

He set down the can of soup. “Meg,” he protested, starting to wonder exactly what kind of nut-case he’d brought home that night.

Whatever she read in his tone made her stiffen. “I didn’t think it could really happen like that either, but I haven’t been with anyone else.”

He searched her expression, seeing mostly anxiety. He shook his head, refusing to believe this because it was too far out there. “Are you serious right now? You think I got you pregnant?”

“I know I’m pregnant, Linc. There’s no think about it.” She was really white, her freckles standing out like little brown dots.

“Well, it’s not mine,” he blurted, furious that this was even happening. Panicking. “I wore condoms. They didn’t break. Were you poking holes in them when I wasn’t looking?” he demanded.

“No!”

“’Cause I wear them for a reason. I don’t want kids,” he railed, hearing himself sounding like the biggest * on the planet, but f*ck. Did she know what she was saying? “I am not interested, Meg. I told you that night that I wasn’t ever going to marry and have kids.”

“Okay!” She held up a hand. It shook and her lips were white. Her blue eyes were wide and dark and shiny. Deeply wounded. “I hear you.” Her voice was so jagged with emotion it sent a preternatural chill over him. “If you don’t believe me, fine. I didn’t come here for anything except to tell you. I have to tell Blake that I’m moving back here, and he’s going to ask who the father is. I’ll tell him and everyone else it was someone in Chicago. Have a nice life, Linc.”

She turned and was slamming the door behind her before he’d properly absorbed what she’d said.

Fine? His brain was having a nuclear meltdown with how not fine he was with any of this. He’d been a golden boy of crisis management on the rigs, never letting emotion get the best of him, always taking stock and forming a plan of action faster than anyone else.

He stared at the door, trying to grasp what had just happened.

Meg was pregnant. She wasn’t standing here insisting he claim it as his though. She didn’t care if he believed he was the father. But it sounded like she’d come here directly from the airport. Like that was the only thing on her mind from her door across the country to his.

Now she was planning to tell her brother she was moving back here. But she was going to tell him the father was back in Chicago.

While, at some point in the future, a kid might start running around town wearing something like Linc’s face.

Linc didn’t care much what people thought of him, but he knew what he thought of men who didn’t care for their own children.

He’d worn a condom, he tried reminding himself, but that argument was falling away as he saw again her rigid body language, like they’d been throwing punches and all she’d wanted was to get away in one piece to nurse her injuries. She’d retreated with the speed of the combatant who’d taken a swift one-two and lost.

Hell, she hadn’t even put up a fight. He was the one who’d started swinging without even considering what he was saying.

“Meg,” he called, far too late because he could hear the sound of her engine receding. He swore. Self-contempt bubbled up inside him. He reached for his keys, wondering if he was being a fool, but he had to talk to her. Had to know.

Was she really pregnant with his kid?

The teeth on the keys bit into his palm.

If she was, what the hell was he going to do?

*

Meg hadn’t expected a warm embrace into delighted arms, but she had hoped for civility. She had anticipated his disbelief, but not such unequivocal rejection.